NASCAR insiders weigh in on Ross Chastain, Chase Elliott dustup: 'Imagine if that was Carson Hocevar'

An incident between Ross Chastain and Chase Elliott turned some heads at COTA this weekend, in part because it offered a stark contrast to how other drivers might have been treated had they swapped places.

Chastain had an early dive-bomb in Lap 1 of the EchoPark Automotive Grand Prix in Austin, taking out Elliott in the process.

Elliott vowed to get revenge on Chastain after talking it over with his team. He would even get the opportunity to deliver it later in the race. Instead, Chastain let Elliott drive right by, conceding positioning after his earlier aggression on the track.

But the lack of criticism pointed Ross Chastain’s way following the Lap 1 wreck caught the eye of some NASCAR insiders as being a bit of a double standard.

“All week (Carson) Hocevar‘s been just taking all sorts of arrows, right?” The Athletic’s Jordan Bianchi said on The Teardown podcast. “It’s too aggressive, he’s got to pick his spots better, and we’ve all collectively, a lot of us, have said the same thing: ‘Young driver, yes, he’s made some dumb decisions in the Truck Series. He made a dumb decision last year with Harrison Burton.’ But the events of the last week you can kind of excuse it. The (Ryan) Blaney thing was not excusable.

“And it’s like OK, but then one of the guys who was in the line to tell Hocevar you need to be better, Lap 1 makes a move that is very low chance of being successful. Like the probability of that is minuscule. You go in there, you snug the corner. You can’t go in there low. You have to go in there broad. It’s a move of like, ‘What are you doing? You can’t win the race on Lap 1, but you sure as hell can lose it.’ It had no chance of making it happen.”

One week after Chastain chided Hocevar for his aggressive driving in some spots and lack of helping in others, he went out and got ultra-aggressive on the very first lap, putting other drivers at risk.

The double standard in terms of how the two moves — Carson Hocevar’s and Ross Chastain’s — were received was nailed by Bianchi.

“Imagine if that would have been Carson Hocevar,” Bianchi said. “Imagine. There would have been people lined up on pit road with pitchforks, like, ‘Oh my God.’ The line to kick his ass would have been out the door.

“It is Chastain now, and he does have a history and all these things. So there is a little bit of, ‘Oh, here we go again.’ But it’s something that Denny (Hamlin)‘s talked about on his podcast and other drivers have said too, of like drivers have to make better decisions. It’s not just the circumstances and things like this. You can blame different factors, but some of the times drivers do have to make smarter decisions. That’s a decision I just don’t see what you’re hoping to accomplish.”